Guest Country 2017

7.8.17

Today we look to the east - to this year's guest country Romania. VIENNA DESIGN WEEK has taken on the task with the annually changing guest country to open up an in-depth and multifaceted view of design in other European countries.

In addition to the showcase "THREADS OF TRADITION" in the festival [more] headquarters, the exhibition "Play & Rewind - Memories, games and tales in Romanian design" at the Romanian Cultural Institute will focus on Romanian design.

During the traditional exploratory tour at the beginning of the year, a part of the festival team already visited this year's guest country. Getting to know the design scene and its protagonists directly and on site are important factors in the planning process of Lilli Hollein, Julia Hürner and their team. Thus in February the festival team travelled to Bucharest, Cluj and Timişoara and the discovery tour began. The visit of design studios, galleries and the Romanian Design Week encouraged the team in its decision to put the small but fine Romanian design scene once again into the limelight.

The Romanian Cultural Institute in Vienna (RKI) has already contributed excellent work in previous years during the festival and Romanian contributions have been presented already at earlier festival editions. We are delighted that this year Romania takes the spotlight even more as it will be presented as the official guest country in the festival programme. With great commitment the Romanian Cultural Institute managed to build a design bridge between the countries.